CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10236, 3 January 1894, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

Oh ! those Scots ! " The appointment of the Earl of Elgin to he the Viceroy of India,” say the Scottish Leader, “ puts the coping stone on Scottish appointments abroad. At this moment Greater Britain is virtually ruled by Scotsmen.” Then follows a list of Scotch Governors, beginning with the Earl of Aberdeen and ending with Sir J. S. Hay (Barbadoes), The Leader goes on to say : —“ All in their turn are under Mr Gladstone, whose father was a Leith man. Our foreign affairs are entrusted to the Earl of Rosebery ; the army is controlled by Mr Camp-bell-Bannerman; the home affairs are managed by Mr Asquith.”

Melilla—called by the Arabs, Mlila—< has been in the posseesion of the Spaniards since 1496, when it was taken by the Dube of Medina Sidonia. It is situated on a peninsula joined to the mainland by a rocky tongue of land about a hundred yards wide. The lagoon, which serves as n, harbour, is on the south side, and is dominated by the fort of San Lorenzo. The town of about 2000 inhabitants slopes steeply up to the Koabah or citadel. It is surrounded by three walla, the first of which is fortified, and has flanking towers. The batteries Las Cabras, El Bonete, San Juan and La Concepcion are in this wall. Fort Sidi Guariach, the building of which brought about the prerent hostilities with the Riff Arabs, lies to the south of Fort Lorenzo. The Jews live between the second and third walls in the El Mantelete place.

Commemorative tablets are about to be placed upon the London houses where various eminent composers have died. This excellent idea is due to the Incorporated Society of Musicians, which holds its annual congress iu the first week of the now year. The Society has bad plaques specially designed for the purpose, and the plates first to be fixed are upon the death places of Sir Stcrndale Bennett, Weber, and Sir George Macfarren.

Mr Balfour has written a letter on golf to The National Review in order, among other purposes, to correct what he calls the very singular delusion, that because the game can bo played by the middle-aged it cannot be difficult, and need not be mastered in youth. Ho says: “It is better to have a late conversion than to remain unregeneralo. But if the most distinguished cricketer or racquet-player defers, till age begins to steal upon him, the hour of reform, because in the pride of his youth he perceives that men old enough to he his father are playing golf with distinction, he will, to his irremediable regret, find himeeif surpassed through life by°men to whom, if success depended on natural endowments alone, he should be able to give a stroke a hole.”

A contemporary writes Uncle," as applied to a pawnbroker, is a wretched pun on the Latin word uncus, a hook. Pawnbrokers employed a hook to lift articles pawned to upper shelves before spouts were adopted. " Gouo to the uncus ” is exactly tantamount to the modern phrase, "up the spout.” The pronoun waa inserted to carry out the pun. The French phrase, “a ma iante,”'does not mean "to my aunt’s,” but" to the ecoundrA’s,” the word tante in French argot being the moat reproachful word they can use, speaking of a man. " Gone to my uncle’s,” in French, " G’esi chcz ma tante” at the pawnbroker's. In French the concierge de prison is called « uncle,” because the prisoners are " kept there in pawn” by tiro Government. In the ’seventeenth century a usurer was called “my uacie” in the Walloon pioviaces because of his near connection with spendthrifts, called in Latin nepotes, nephews.

The moat luxurious yaoht of the age is the Valhalla. Mr Laycock, the owner, is the fortunate young man into whose possession the enormous wealth oE Mr J. haycock, the ship and coal-owner, has passed. Old Mr Lay cock died twelve years ago, and Ilia son, who lived a short but merry life as the Squire of Goaforfeh Hall, died a fortnight after him, having been poisoned by new paint while attending his father’s funeral. I'ho great fortune of £40,000 a year was entailed on the old man’s grandson, a boy of fourteen, so that by the time he attained hie majority there were large accumulations, even although his mother, now Lady D’Arcy Qodolphia Osborne, had a jointure of £9OOO a year. The Valhalla is 'a yacht of 1500 tons. She is a “ dream of luxury.”

The British Journal of Photography says: —lf there is one point more strongly impressed than any other upon the tyro in the use of oxygen and hydrogen, it ia that he must be most careful to prevent any possible admixture of the two. The advice is most desirable, although itia well known that for explosion to take place the proportion of the mixed gases to each ether must be within certain well-known limits. Oiu- \ side those limits no explosion will take place. The knowledge of tfcia fact underlies the novel application wo refer to. At Huddersfield, Brin’s Oxygen Company baa erected oxygen =>isnt for the purpose

of (supplying that; gas to mix with the illuminating gas to be issued to the public. About 6 per cent is added just before it enters the station meter, and is then stored in special holders. The Corporation gas is enriched to the extant of five and a half candle-power by this addition, a fact which is most singular whan it is remembsred that atmospheric air is looked upon as a deleterious adulterant of ordinary coal gaa.